Which means federal/state financial aid services to the disenfranchised are? :)

Christopher Allan Webber at 2014-04-03T16:52:13Z

I mind-dumped on Greg already, but I figured I'd be public about it.

Prior restraint decisions have only ever applied to content, not context, so as far as I can tell this would not be a good argument in court.

Which is to say, a government telling you that you must submit your news articles to them for review is not ok; but a government telling you that you must use 100% post-consumer recycled paper, or that you may not use ink of a certain kind, would be totally OK.

However.

I think talking about disparate impact on political power based on targeted taxes or tax breaks may actually be an interesting question. I've been trying to come up with good examples, but they're hard - I guess there's a lot of statistical and economic analysis that needs to happen before we can know what's disadvantageous and what's fair. Doing that without descending into the abyss of saying that people must all make the same amount of money will be tricky, philosophically, but the court would need to bend over backwards and do so if they ever confronted this question.

But then, they probably won't ever take a case that requires them to address it. Yay, discretion!

I'll have to read the decision, and probably write a long paper about it, before I can adequately decide what to think about this, and speculate on the future, but I'm really excited about this in general (because it's INTERESTING!!!)

Mark Holmquist at 2014-04-03T17:06:12Z

Greg Grossmeier likes this.

That's not really the argument.

Money's not speech, nor is a car or a bullhorn. But restrictions on these things can restrict speech. For instance, a uniform sales tax on items that include bullhorns is not, in my opinion, prior restraint. But requiring a special permit or tax stamp for someone to have a bullhorn at a protest obviously is. I think that's pretty uncontroversial.

Now, s/bullhorn/money. Same argument, but for some reason it is much more controversial.

Pete Daniels at 2014-04-04T17:30:30Z